Soft war manual

It is also an illustration of how far the Pentagon has moved beyond the Bush administration’s initial reluctance to use the military to support “nation-building” efforts when it came into office.

But some influential officers are already arguing that the US Army still needs to put actions behind its new words, and they have raised searching questions about whether the Army’s military structure, personnel policies and weapons programmes are consistent with its doctrine.

The manual describes the United States as facing an era of “persistent conflict” in which the American military will often operate among civilians in countries where local institutions are fragile and efforts to win over a wary population are vital.

Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the commander of the US Army’s Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, began briefing lawmakers on the document on Thursday. In an interview, he called it a “blueprint to operate over the next 10 to 15 years.” “Army doctrine now equally weights tasks dealing with the population—stability or civil support—with those related to offensive and defensive operations,” the manual states. “Winning battles and engagements is important but alone is not sufficient. Shaping the civil situation is just as important to success.”

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the military is enmeshed in rebuilding local institutions, helping to restore essential services and safeguarding a vulnerable population. The new manual is an attempt to put these endeavours—along with counterinsurgency warfare—at the core of military training, planning and operations. That would require some important changes. “There is going to be some resistance,” General Caldwell said. “There will be people who will hear and understand what we are saying, but it is going to take some time to inculcate that into our culture.”

Even as they welcomed it, other Army officers said there were inconsistencies between the newly minted doctrine on how to wage war and current practice. Army brigades in Iraq have too few combat engineers to support civil programmes, they said. Also, they added, the Army does not promote officers who advise the Iraqi and Afghan security forces as readily as battalion staff officers and needs to improve their training.

Some Army officers have also questioned whether the development of the Army’s Future Combat System, a multibillion-dollar programme in which air and unmanned ground sensors will be networked with armoured vehicles so that soldiers can attack targets from a safe distance, is consistent with this new vision of war.

When the United States invaded Iraq, Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, spoke highly of the value of speed and high-technology military systems. The mission of stabilising Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein was generally treated as a secondary concern.

The American military’s difficulty in securing Iraq has led to much soul-searching within the armed forces on how to prepare for future conflicts. Col. H.R. McMaster of the Army, who commanded the successful effort in 2005 to secure the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar, asserts in a new article that an exaggerated faith in military technology and a corresponding undervaluation of political and military measures to secure the peace undermined American efforts in Iraq.

At the Pentagon, Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates has cautioned the US Army not to assume that the counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan are anomalies. Gates said in October that “unconventional wars” were “the ones most likely to be fought in the years ahead.” A 2005 Pentagon directive also advised the military to treat “stability operations” as a core mission.

The Army’s new manual tries to address such concerns. It paints a picture of future wars in which the Army needs to be prepared to deal with changing coalitions and complex cultural factors. “The operational environment will remain a dirty, frightening, physically and emotionally draining one in which death and destruction result from environmental conditions creating humanitarian crisis as well as conflict itself,” the manual states. It will be an arena, the manual notes, in which success depends not only on force in defeating an enemy but also “how quickly a state of stability can be established and maintained.”

General Caldwell said the manual would influence Army education and training by stressing the sort of skills that are needed to bring stability to conflict-ridden states with weak governments.

“There will be people who naturally will say, ‘If I can do high-end offence and defence, I can do any lesser kind of operations,’ “ he said. “What we have found through seven years is that is not the case.”

Some steps to improve the Army’s abilities in these areas are already under way, he asserted. By way of example, changes are being made in the way combat engineers are assigned, to give commanders more flexibility.

Some of the Army’s up-and-coming officers, however, say much more needs to be done, including attracting more officers to disciplines that the manual says are so necessary, like advising foreign security forces and assisting with civil affairs.

“The parts of the Army closest to the battlefield have adapted, including tactics and doctrine,” said Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, who wrote a widely circulated article criticizing how the generals fought the Iraq war. “However, the institutional Army, to include our organisational designs and our personnel system, is essentially the same as before 9/11.”

He added: “The most important tasks we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan are building host-nation institutions. We need to attract the very best officers into these specialties to be successful at these tasks.”